12 years is not enough time for killing someone like that, I assume that also means he was a felon so the firearm he used today would have been obtained illegally.

Yes, he would have to have acquired the weapon illegally.

This is why the secondary unregulated market needs to be shut down. All gun transfers that are not within a family (IE you are giving a .22 to your son on his 18th birthday) need to be made through a licensed gun dealer.

This is why the secondary unregulated market needs to be shut down. All gun transfers that are not within a family (IE you are giving a .22 to your son on his 18th birthday) need to be made through a licensed gun dealer.

I have to wonder, if any other product killed that many people a day, would so many people rush to defend and demand the unfettered right to keep that product in their homes?

You will not find another possession that is so inextricably interwoven with American myth and history.

Guns are, for ill or otherwise, an integral part of the American character...from the Minutemen at Concord and the "Over Mountain Men" at the Battle of King's Mountain to the frontiersmen and their families bearing long rifles through the Cumberland Gap, the Texans at the Alamo etc etc etc ad infinitum.

No other Western nation has this kind of enduring national identity built up around the citizen soldier and frontiersman defending his hearth and home against the enemy.

I have to wonder, if any other product killed that many people a day, would so many people rush to defend and demand the unfettered right to keep that product in their homes?

No.

If any other entertainment device killed even a tenth as many, it would be gone from American homes.

But guns are not 'just objects'. They're religious devices, given mystical powers and feelings. And despite the fact that they serve no function beyond entertainment and are extremely dangerous, Americans continue to insist on having them just because they feel good with them. And nothing changes because of this collective delusion.

Not always so. I have known two people in the army who actually had their M-16's stolen while on guard duty or on FTX because people showed up who had loaded guns...and of course, the M-16's were, ahem, not loaded.

One of the incidents was at Ft Leonard Wood, and a van showed up with rednecks who had shotguns and took over 30 weapons from the soldiers, none of whom had live ammo issued.

That sort of thing cannot happen anymore after 9/11, thank God.

Thefts of police weapons still happen as well, not to mention illegal shipments of AK's from China (back in the 90's, over 20,000 kalashnikov's were seized in the port of San Fransisco from a Chinese freighter)

If any other entertainment device killed even a tenth as many, it would be gone from American homes.

But guns are not 'just objects'. They're religious devices, given mystical powers and feelings. And despite the fact that they serve no function beyond entertainment and are extremely dangerous, Americans continue to insist on having them just because they feel good with them. And nothing changes because of this collective delusion.

It is a national disgrace on par with slavery.

I don't see how you can conflate the ownership of and tyranny over a living human being with the ownership of a firearm, which is a morally neutral object and utterly inanimate.

We can set limits on what kind of firearms people should have access to, but guns themselves have no intrinsic moral quality.

As CD has noted, that isn't always the case. As I've mentioned here before, i once met a federal agent who was shot during a raid on a drug stash house. The enforcers who fired on the raid team used full-auto AKMs that were smuggled into the US illegally. They had never been lawfully owned within our borders.

I don't see how you can conflate the ownership of and tyranny over a living human being with the ownership of a firearm, which is a morally neutral object and utterly inanimate.

We can set limits on what kind of firearms people should have access to, but guns themselves have no intrinsic moral quality.

The massive numbers and unfettered access to firearms in the US are the direct and proximate causes of thousands of unnecessary deaths every year, and countless more injuries and human suffering. And this huge availability of firearms exists because Americans turn a blind eye to this death and suffering, and shrug and mutter about 'rights' or somesuch, wilfully ignoring the human cost in favour of delusional beliefs and magical thinking about their precious, precious guns.

Why they have these delusions is another matter entirely, but these delusions are so entrenched as to be essentially religious in nature. And it is a religion to which thousands of your fellow Americans are sacrificed every year.

It is absolutely a moral failing of this nation. Clinging to fantasies while ignoring the carnage wrought upon your fellow citizens is something no civilised nation should tolerate.

“But that’s not a response to my question, Mr. LaPierre.” Gregory began. “What I hear you saying is, ‘Well, you can’t do anything about the high capacity ammunition magazines because it simply won’t work,’ yet you’re proposing things that you don’t know will completely work. But you’re into the art of the possible, because your standard is anything that has a chance of work we ought to try, except when it has to do with guns or ammunition. Don’t you see that people see that as a complete dodge?”

I don't see how you can conflate the ownership of and tyranny over a living human being with the ownership of a firearm, which is a morally neutral object and utterly inanimate.

We can set limits on what kind of firearms people should have access to, but guns themselves have no intrinsic moral quality.

I don't disagree- there is little difference between a baseball bat and a gun- intrinsically. Both make good weapons. The problem with a gun is that you can stand off and kill lots of people from a distance rather than chasing them and hitting them in the head with a Louisville Slugger.

I also don't have a problem with how a gun looks or what kind of bullet it shoots. What I have a problem with is capacity. A 30.06 cartridge works equally well in a deer rifle and a BAR. But the BAR can hold lots and lots of bullets and is therefor a more lethal and immoral weapon.

Would you agree that any reasonable person should not be able to own a magazine or clip that holds more than six shells? It's a simple fix. It does not prevent the right to bear arms in any way, shape, or form. A trade-out mechanism, with no grandfathering for existing possession of any clip/magazine bigger than six rounds, would be simple to implement and not require the buy-back of a single gun.

Let's start by looking at factors that are sometimes assumed to be associated with gun violence but statistically are not.

It is commonly assumed that mental illness or stress levels trigger gun violence. But that's not borne out at the state level. We found no statistical association between gun deaths and mental illness or stress levels. We also found no association between gun violence and the proportion of neurotic personalities.

Images of drug-crazed gunmen are a commonplace: Guns and drug abuse are presumed to go together. But, again, that was not the case in our state-level analysis. We found no association between illegal drug use and death from gun violence at the state level.

Some might think gun violence would be higher in states with higher levels of unemployment and higher levels of inequality. But, again, we found no evidence of any such association with either of these variables.

Weapons: Of the 142 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and semiautomatic handguns. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to slaughter students in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005, so too did James Holmes, along with an AR-15 assault rifle, when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater. In Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza wielded two handguns and a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle as he massacred 20 school children and six adults.

Would you agree that any reasonable person should not be able to own a magazine or clip that holds more than six shells? It's a simple fix.

No. It's a simplistic fix. You never address the fact that you're treating a single action, ten shot revolver as if it's worse for society than an ultra compact .380 semi auto that has a six shot magazine. It's not just capacity, it's concealability, and the ability to rapidly reload. Rimfires that reload manually, one bullet at a time through a loading gate or tubular magazine, are far less conducive to criminality than ultra compact swing out revolvers, Saturday Night Specials and assorted semi automatic mouse guns that don't trip your six shot rule.

seriously though, ending that war on drugs tomfoolery would probably save more lives than magically preventing every last possible incident with a firearm instantly.
...Shame we all know that won't happen in the foreseeable future.

I tried to get around my ban on Roger L Simon's blog but they deleted my comment immediately, ... good thing too. Some ideas are too good to tell those fanatics, like "how about if you level with old people, and come up with a totally believable plan to save SS and Medicare. You know one that isn't based on the mouldy lie that lowering taxes doesn't lower revenue"

The general consensus seems to be a ten round limit to detachable magazines, and I do not think that is unreasonable. The 1989 assault rifle law in California set the limit at 15 rounds, which is pretty standard for most handguns made today and would prohibit the 30 round extended mags that Loughner used in Arizona last year.

Many semi auto .22 rifles have integral tube magazines that hold 19 or twenty rounds, and these have been around for nearly 100 years.

Before the NRA calls for all firefighters to be armed. Let me say as a 20 year veteran. We do not want to carry weapons. The first time a firefighter in an urban city shoots a gang member, every other firefighter in that city becomes a target for revenge.

Firefighters by and large are viewed as the good guys, even in the roughest inner city neighborhoods, the last thing we want is to be viewed as law enforcement.

The high capacity ban could start at .30 caliber/9mm. Or exclude non removable tubes like what we see on the old lever action or pump 22 rifles. Basically a small game gun or plinker. Not much of a public safety threat like an AR .223 or 5.56

The general consensus seems to be a ten round limit to detachable magazines, and I do not think that is unreasonable. The 1989 assault rifle law in California set the limit at 15 rounds, which is pretty standard for most handguns made today and would prohibit the 30 round extended mags that Loughner used in Arizona last year.

Many semi auto .22 rifles have integral tube magazines that hold 19 or twenty rounds, and these have been around for nearly 100 years.

Those are rimfires, are they not? Are they really considered as dangerous or in need for further restrictions as the stuff firing .223 centerfire? Someone posted a picture showing how different the cartridges were in terms of size and propellant load.

Frankly, in the US I think that would result in armed insurrection. Too much of the nation would simply refuse to comply and things would get very ugly.

So we need to escalate the armament of law enforcement in order to enforce reasonable gun regulation.

When America realizes that it's the gun nuts they have to defend the country from, they'll quit believing the gun nuts when say they need moar gunz to defend the nation, or protect the constitution or whatever their arguments will be.

I still can't take a bottle of Jack and use that to kill a room full of people. Unless I get in my car after drinking said bottle. So yes, smoking and drinking kill an assload of people every year-usually slowly, and usually only effecting the drinker,smoker and their loved ones(which is not unimportant,but the discussion is at it's heart truly about guns). Including members of my family. I would still like to know, and understand the reason why we have more gun deaths and guns than anywhere else on the planet. It wasn't always like this,was it? This country isn't innocent, and usually "the good old days" only existed in someone's imagination, but the attitudes towards guns has changed quite a bit in the last 25 yrs or so. How and why did that happen?

Could you find some illustrations for us non-gun types? I'm getting lost in the jargon.

Henry Golden Boy, a tubular magazine rimfire. It hold 16 rounds of .22LR, requires you cycle the lever action between each shot and to reload you have to twist and retract a long rod slung underneath the barrel, then feed each round manually one at a time and replace the rod. Virtually impossible to conceal.

Ruger LCP. Holds six rounds of .380 in a removable magazine. Semi automatic (ie self loading) double action trigger. Very fast to reload. Three times the muzzle energy of the .22 LR. Tiny, light, readily concealable and over a hundred dollars cheaper than the Henry.

That can be measured, but it varies by type of ammunition used and intended usage environment. That would not be a useful metric.

Then what is? We seem to want to limit the total amount of carnage someone could inflict per unit of time, which to me seems like some sort of power measurement. And we already regulate other things by power (like 49cc or under scooters).

Lets do what we can to reduce criminal access. Unfortunately even if all the guns were gone, our level of deliberate violence would still stand way above most other nations. That's why I want a broad approach. Because some sick evil bastard can do with a bomb or poison like he could have with a gun. Or worse.

I still can't take a bottle of Jack and use that to kill a room full of people. Unless I get in my car after drinking said bottle. So yes, smoking and drinking kill an assload of people every year-usually slowly, and usually only effecting the drinker,smoker and their loved ones(which is not unimportant,but the discussion is at it's heart truly about guns). Including members of my family. I would still like to know, and understand the reason why we have more gun deaths and guns than anywhere else on the planet. It wasn't always like this,was it? This country isn't innocent, and usually "the good old days" only existed in someone's imagination, but the attitudes towards guns has changed quite a bit in the last 25 yrs or so. How and why did that happen?

The Carter coup of the NRA. No, not that one. Harlon Bronson Carter.

Researchok posted a page, that links to an article about that fun time. It's when several adult males in my family left the NRA.

Though to be fair, the domination of the hunters was an interlude. see this article from the VRC (multiple pages) to get some of that story. But pre-hunters it was marksmanship for future soldiers, while post-hunters it's, well, the patriot movement.

Lets do what we can to reduce criminal access. Unfortunately even if all the guns were gone, our level of deliberate violence would still stand way above most other nations. That's why I want a broad approach. Because some sick evil bastard can do with a bomb or poison like he could have with a gun. Or worse.

Whew past #100! Where I work is a place that a is a pretty good leading indicator of jewelry mfg in the US. We just this minute closed out the best December in company history. 28 years BTW. Americans are making things that make them money again, at least in this little tiny slice of the economy.

The article says its about cigarettes but its really about women in its bemoaning of "feminization".

What's the special add-in to Daily Caller Cigarettes? Misogyny.

Good lord, reading the excerpts from that review now. It simply screams "barely-closeted":

Known in the ‘50s as the Marlboro “regular,” this was the standard cigarette. Before cigarettes were sold to men for the purpose of sexual solicitation (ed. huh?) , they were allowed to revel in their polarizing maleness, their seductiveness muted and irrelevant, their purpose utilitarian........

..... The smoke comes in fast and runs fast for the throat, forcing the participant to hold in for a moment’s reflection.

Only at this point does the smoker appreciate the full thickness of the product he has just inhaled. He enjoys the unexpected pleasure of being able to control it, maneuver it for a few split seconds so as to cover selected points at the top of the chest. This moment is most satisfactory, providing a warmth and respiratory presence so lacking from other cigarettes.......

The exhale, too, is thick, requiring work from the mouth, shaping the lips into a crude circle as the ingredients are let go unfashionably into the air.

Its combination of pre-taste, post-taste, speed, thickness, and chestal warmth provides sufficiency across five different categories.

No. It's a simplistic fix. You never address the fact that you're treating a single action, ten shot revolver as if it's worse for society than an ultra compact .380 semi auto that has a six shot magazine. It's not just capacity, it's concealability, and the ability to rapidly reload. Rimfires that reload manually, one bullet at a time through a loading gate or tubular magazine, are far less conducive to criminality than ultra compact swing out revolvers, Saturday Night Specials and assorted semi automatic mouse guns that don't trip your six shot rule.

But no one engages in Mass Killings with those guns. They use guns with lots of bullets. And I like simple fixes. They are easy and cheap.

So the key is not the total capacity, but the capacity over time factoring the replaceable magazine?

Multiple aspects, really. and part of the problem is that we get tangled about what we're discussing.

A (not the) breakdown: there are three sub-discussions. Suicides, "simple" homicides, and mass homicides. Suicides have one death: the shooter. "Simple" homicides are at most a household, though usually only one or two targets. Mass homicides are intents to kill multiple people some of whom are not members of the household. Both simple and mass homicide may end with suicide but the intent to kill others first eliminates them from that.

Suicides are mostly done with handguns. capacity and reload capability are immaterial. Suicides are the biggest group for whom mental health program improvements would have an impact. Ideally we'd have BOTH a means of recognizing when someone was suicidal AND the ability to remove firearms from their possession during that time.

Simple homicides are, again, mostly done with so-called "defense" guns. Still mostly handguns, shotguns start making a large minority. Reload capability still doesn't tend to matter. Concealabity matters here only when the homicide goes outside the household. Examples here are convenience store robberies gone "wrong", men headed off to shoot the wives who have left them, etc. In other words, they're headed to kill one person and need to hide the fact till they get close enough to act.

Mass homicides are where the reload issue comes into play. Whether handgun or rifle (so far rarely shotgun) the intent is to kill enough people that one set of shots, however, stored, is not going to be enough. And further a delay (to stuff bullets into a fixed tubular magazine, for example) means they're going to get stopped.

Controlling by type (assault weapon or modified military weapon for example) and capacity/reload speed (size and type of magazine) will have an impact on mass homicides, but not much on simple homicides or suicides. By itself it is, in my opinion, almost as much a red herring as the NRA's aim at mental health. Not completely as the NRA mental health is mainly "lock up the criminals" while refusing most crosstabbing of criminal action and weapon ownership. (magic thinking, really. Lock them up and only non-criminals will have guns -- and we can just trust that to happen without having to know who actually has guns.)

A good solution that doesn't involve a solomon-like decision to remove ALL guns is going to be complex. It's also going to be difficult if not impossible to solve. But the big thing to watch will be how people will say "it won't stop [this]," because they're being disingenuous or ignorant - as I just showed.

And I think Wonkette is wrong about its time period: Focusing on whiskeys and cigarettes as they are, and especially to advertising of the latter, they see like they're trying to ape Mad Men, though they're FAILing badly.

The general consensus seems to be a ten round limit to detachable magazines, and I do not think that is unreasonable. The 1989 assault rifle law in California set the limit at 15 rounds, which is pretty standard for most handguns made today and would prohibit the 30 round extended mags that Loughner used in Arizona last year.

Many semi auto .22 rifles have integral tube magazines that hold 19 or twenty rounds, and these have been around for nearly 100 years.

Ten rounds is too many. If you can't hit what you are aiming at with six, you aren't doing it right. And larger internal magazines can contain plugs, just like shotguns.

Lets do what we can to reduce criminal access. Unfortunately even if all the guns were gone, our level of deliberate violence would still stand way above most other nations. That's why I want a broad approach. Because some sick evil bastard can do with a bomb or poison like he could have with a gun. Or worse.

Except they don't. Mass killings are far, far less common in other First World nations, despite essentially identical access to all the other things people usually cite, like cars, and bomb materials, and so on. It happens on occasion, sure, and it's always horrible when it does. But once a decade or so is far, far better than the ridiculous status quo here in the US.

Furthermore, people aren't bombing each other in domestic disputes, in drive-by bombings, in Stand Your Ground bombings, and in all the ones and twos of senseless death that Americans with guns inflict on each other every day.

It's the huge number of guns and the free availability of them that are the problem. That, and the delusional culture where Americans believe that they have everyday civilian uses.

Just getting the guns away from the gangs would be an excellent start. So many violent deaths are a direct result of gang activity with the drug monies. Everything past that is even better.

I'd love to see civilian owned guns really be about sporting activities. Less armed felons will lessen the popular fear and reduce home defense gun numbers.

Fear is the marketing tool, but it's more than fear of gang violence. Now it's fear of the government taking away the right to own guns, fear of an apocalyptic scenario of one kind or another, fear of fear itself. But you know what I think about that.

So you don't care that your solution does nothing to address the vast majority of gun crime?

First things first. And the first thing is to prevent a single shooter from literally blasting six adults and twenty kids to pieces. When trying to do something as complex as dealing with gun violence, pick the low-hanging fruit *first*.

Of *course* I would get rid of handguns if I had a magic wand that worked.

Poof! and they would all disappear. But you know what? That's not going to happen. So put the big rocks in the bucket first. Then you can try to deal with the gravel, and maybe, eventually, the sand. That's the only efficient way to fill a bucket.

First things first. And the first thing is to prevent a single shooter from literally blasting six adults and twenty kids to pieces. When trying to do something as complex as dealing with gun violence, pick the low-hanging fruit *first*.

Of *course* I would get rid of handguns if I had a magic wand that worked.

Poof! and they would all disappear. But you know what? That's not going to happen. So put the big rocks in the bucket first. Then you can try to deal with the gravel, and maybe, eventually, the sand. That's the only efficient way to fill a bucket.

Your six round solution is just as much magical thinking. There's no external difference between a plugged mag and an unplugged magazine, no way to tell that the fix has been done except by magic wand or personal inspection. Magazines aren't serialized or tracked, there's no record of who has what. Your law just ensures that millions of them get stashed, and possession of the rimfire lever action rifles that are neither associated with crime or mass killing will become grounds for suspicion of a felony. Owners of hundred years old antiques, curios and relics will get caught up because in your worship of simple, easy, quick fixes (that in reality will fix little if anything) there can be no exceptions due to some absolutist orthodoxical belief in the six shot rule for its own sake.

Your six round solution is just as much magical thinking. There's no external difference between a plugged mag and an unplugged magazine, no way to tell that the fix has been done except by magic wand or personal inspection. Magazines aren't serialized or tracked, there's no record of who has what. Your law just ensures that millions of them get stashed, and possession of the rimfire lever action rifles that are neither associated with crime or mass killing will become grounds for suspicion of a felony. Owners of hundred years old antiques, curios and relics will get caught up because in your worship of simple, easy, quick fixes (that in reality will fix little if anything) there can be no exceptions due to some absolutist orthodoxical belief in the six shot rule for it's own sake.

Fine, then make those exceptions. But capacity makes the single shooter a mass killer. True fact. How would you deal with it?

I would add: registration and licensing upon proof of purchase of an approved gun safe, locker or other methods of securing weapon. Add insurance to cover accidental discharge and theft, premiums based on lethality of gun.

Is it me, or is the real fear of the NRA is that people would voluntarily relinquish their guns or get less lethal ones? The realists have to know that confiscation simply isn't on the table anytime soon, especially for a person not already a convicted felon or adjudicated a danger. But the possibility of guns going the way of cigarettes has to scare them more. It appears that the gun culture is turning off younger and younger generations, especially because of its alliance with the reactionary right.

Liberals = they want to control other people. Sorry, I wasn't born in a socialist nation and I won't be a member of one. Period.

2.)

Show one instance where the NRA has every claimed to be a victim...hasn't happened and won't happen. So now the anti-gun nut cases can keep banging the drum on guns kill people....no one else is responsible...just the NRA and legal gun owners.

3.)

Has Obama been the target of an assassination yet, by anyone, domestic or foreign?

4.)

The answer is immediate execution upon conviction. Unless you are a lilly-livered criminal apologist, that is.

For once, they're not completely crazy. I think this is a really irresponsible thing for a newspaper or news site to do.

It may be public info, but it's damn irresponsible putting it all on a readily-accessible and easily-referenced map like that on the website for the area's major newspaper (which happens to be a Gannett rag, BTW).

Fine, then make those exceptions. But capacity makes the single shooter a mass killer. True fact. How would you deal with it?

I like WBIII's argument of creating a new class of NFA registration that applies to all centerfire semi auto rifles that accept detachable magazines. Give a certain amount of time for people to register their guns, and then all transfers require an ATF form 1, $50 tax stamp and notification to the CLEO. I'd go further though and include all semi auto pistols and swing out revolvers in that class too. I'd restrict new magazine sales to ten rounds, exempting tubular mag lever action rimfires. I'd make existing high cap mags non-transferable, non loanable, with no inheritance rights and institute a voluntary buyback program.

Hmm, interesting. Just went to the Twitter website and wanted to check out how something was designed, so I right-clicked on it and used Inspect Element in Safari ... and discovered that there's a big chunk of JSON data that Twitter's Javascript code adds to the page after it's loaded, with some very interesting stuff in it. For one thing, it looks like there's a full list of all the Twitter IDs you've blocked - I don't think there's any official way to get this info.

There's a lot of other stuff in there too - your saved searches and settings, and some Twitter internal settings. <spock>Fascinating</spock>.

A map showing licensed permit holders may be legal and may have been garnered from legal sources, but that doesn't mean that it should have been used that way. I get the newsworthiness of showing just how many permits were issued and where they're issued, but that doesn't make it right.

Sad news, indeed. Just about all of the older actors from my tv childhood are gone now. It's not surprising (I'm 56) but still sad. But Jack had a long and productive career and was loved by many. Vaya con Dios, Jack.

I like WBIII's argument of creating a new class of NFA registration that applies to all centerfire semi auto rifles that accept detachable magazines. Give a certain amount of time for people to register their guns, and then all transfers require an ATF form 1, $50 tax stamp and notification to the CLEO. I'd go further though and include all semi auto pistols and swing out revolvers in that class too. I'd restrict new magazine sales to ten rounds, exempting tubular mag lever action rimfires. I'd make existing high cap mags non-transferable, non loanable, with no inheritance rights and institute a voluntary buyback program.

According to Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering, fireman Tomas Kaczowka died at the scene and fireman Mike Chiapperini, who is also a lieutenant with the Webster Police Department also died at the scene. The two injured firemen have been identified as Theodore Scardino, a West Webster Fire Officer, and fireman Joseph Hofsetter, who is a volunteer firefighter and a fulltime firefighter with the Rochester Fire Department.

Chief Pickering says an off duty Greece police officer, John Ritter, who happened to be driving by the scene at the time in his private vehicle received injuries from shrapnel striking the side of his body in his car.

Police believe seven homes were destroyed by the fire.

Spengler was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Police don't know a motive yet. Pickering says that Spengler was living in a home on Lake Road with his sister but his sister is missing. At a press conference, Pickering expressed concern about her safety.

A map showing licensed permit holders may be legal and may have been garnered from legal sources, but that doesn't mean that it should have been used that way. I get the newsworthiness of showing just how many permits were issued and where they're issued, but that doesn't make it right.

I'm actually surprised they got the info. I would have thought that is the kind of thing that's protected.

I can't figure out why lohud.com created this map. What's the purpose of it? The article doesn't say anything about the reasoning behind it.

It looks like a pure dick move.

Gannett is full of dick moves.

Nashville used to have two daily newspapers, the Tennessean and the Nashville Banner, and by the 1970s, both were bought by Gannett. However, the former publishers' group bought the Banner back from Gannett in 1979; Gannett rigged their JOA (they continued to print the Banner, along with the Tennessean) in their favor and by 1998, the Banner was out of business, because they could no longer compete against the Gannett corporate behemoth.

I imagine that the law will be changed to make obtaining this kind of information and/or putting together a map based on this information behind the wall of confidentiality.

I also imagine that the law to make this information confidential will be enacted faster than any kind of additional strengthening of existing gun laws that allow firearms to fall into the wrong hands.

Yeah. Two volunteer firefighters among the casualties. Two full time firefighters for the town. A police officer from a nearby town. All told - 5 public safety officers - people we rely upon in times of need. The volunteers give of their time so that they can help protect their community.

For once, they're not completely crazy. I think this is a really irresponsible thing for a newspaper or news site to do.

I will agree that this was extremely stupid and irresponsible, putting this information out on the web cannot possibly have any good consequences, only bad ones.

With that being said the comments are mostly justifiably upset, but a few are completely over the top...

Mark Weiss · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Owner-Operator at Amplifier Experts
Germany, 1921-38. The first step in disarming a population is to put a 'hidden' gunman in a school, murder 27 people, then plant a disturbed kid as the fall guy, then you can persuade the politicos to publish lists of gun owners. Turn the public against gun owners, use mob mentality and lynchings to thin the gun owners' numbers, before an outright ban and confiscation.
Yes, the police were chasing a second shooter early in the incident, then news reports on the second shooter stopped and were never mentioned since.
Reply · 152 · Like · 17 hours ago

I can't figure out why lohud.com created this map. What's the purpose of it? The article doesn't say anything about the reasoning behind it.

It looks like a pure dick move.

No shit. I just looked up the home address of the owner of a company I used to work for. The map lets me know that both of his neighbors to the right have permits, as does one other person 4 houses down. The whole neighborhood appears to be ethnically homogeneous and the houses are all quite nice.

Yahoo Homes is nice enough to let me know that the address is part of a 5 bathroom, 3,500 sq. ft. duplex worth around 800K (according to Zillow). I assume family lives in the other unit as their family is large & close-knit. I also assume the gentleman in question would NOT be happy that I--or any criminal with internet access--could easily gather all this info in less than 10 minutes on the web.

And I didn't even go to the other sites that aggregate stuff and will give you a list of names of possible relatives and whatnot. O_o

Ugh. That's possibly enabling a stalker all too well.
If there is any interest at all in lowering resistance to regulations among gun owners and sportsmen, protecting some privacy would help. If for example any and all gun registration/permit activity is going to be used abused like this, it's a clear deliberate disincentive, an attempt to bother or frighten people out of the most law abiding gun ownership. Not harassment by the government but by perhaps an anti gun editor or crusader.

If it's trusted to law officers and kept confidential from the public short of good cause there is far less reason to object. Maybe none at all.

Then, at 3 p.m., the group gathered into the Showroom at Sea, a three-tiered amphitheater decorated in a bright-red Art Deco style, for the first of several sessions deconstructing the loss. Onstage were Reed, now in lime-green pants embroidered with pink swordfish and navy polo shirt with white piping on the collar; and Scott Rasmussen, the pollster who consistently overrated Romney’s chances of winning the election.

Yeah, Fisher is an idiot..We are in for shit Christmas. Sleet at first then 10 inches of snow in a state that rarely gets snow and is unprepared for this.
Thanks for the prayers Bryan you fuck.
Oh Merry Christmas Lizards

. If for example any and all gun registration/permit activity is going to be used abused like this, it's a clear deliberate disincentive, an attempt to bother or frighten people out of the most law abiding gun ownership. Not harassment by the government but by perhaps an anti gun editor or crusader.

It's hard to speculate about the motives for making the map. But I suspect this is the kind of thing that happens in newsrooms on holiday weekends when all the senior editors and reporters are on vacation. Some second stringer or inexperienced reporter was compiling the information and just happened to finish his project when nobody was around to tell him not to publish it.

Yeah, Fisher is an idiot..We are in for shit Christmas. Sleet at first then 10 inches of snow in a state that rarely gets snow and is unprepared for this.
Thanks for the prayers Bryan you fuck.
Oh Merry Christmas Lizards

Ugh. That's possibly enabling a stalker all too well.
If there is any interest at all in lowering resistance to regulations among gun owners and sportsmen, protecting some privacy would help. If for example any and all gun registration/permit activity is going to be used abused like this, it's a clear deliberate disincentive, an attempt to bother or frighten people out of the most law abiding gun ownership. Not harassment by the government but by perhaps an anti gun editor or crusader.

If it's trusted to law officers and kept confidential from the public short of good cause there is far less reason to object. Maybe none at all.

Yeah, it's really creepy that someone can so easily get so much personal information. I don't think there's any putting the genie back in the bottle now WRT to privacy in general, at least not as long as people are using social media like LinkedIn, FB, Twitter, registering their domains publicly, etc. Big business is far too interested in advertising dollars for that and has a lot of (political) weight to throw around, but lawful gun owners/permit holders may be able to change the laws pertaining to that particular info.

I suppose how much success they'd have would largely depend on the process. I assume those are state laws since the map was for two counties in NY state. The thing is, NY is a very blue state and (NYC at least) is big on gun control, so it may be an uphill battle to try to make that info private there (as well as in other blue states).

It's hard to speculate about the motives for making the map. But I suspect this is the kind of thing that happens in newsrooms on holiday weekends when all the senior editors and reporters are on vacation. Some second stringer or inexperienced reporter was compiling the information and just happened to finish his project when nobody was around to tell him not to publish it.

This comment shed some light...

Anne McTernan Parker · University at Albany, SUNY
I saw the article that prompted the certainly questionable decision to run this map, and it wasn't about Newtown. It was about a mentally ill man who was able to amass a bunch of guns, who shot his neighbor in the head. Not disagreeing with the sentiments being expressed about the map itself, but the conspiracy theorists are off the mark on this one.
Reply · 1 · Unlike · 5 hours ago

So I checked the related links and sure enough they lead to this article...

In May, Richard V. Wilson approached a female neighbor on the street and shot her in the back of the head, a crime that stunned their quiet Katonah neighborhood.

What was equally shocking for some was the revelation that the mentally disturbed 77-year-old man had amassed a cache of weapons — including two unregistered handguns and a large amount of ammunition — without any neighbors knowing.

“I think that the access to guns in this country is ridiculous, that anybody can get one,” said a neighbor of Wilson’s who requested anonymity because it’s not known whether the gunman, whose unnamed victim survived, will return home or be sent to prison. “Would I have bought this house knowing somebody (close by) had an arsenal of weapons? No, I would not have.”

So the reason they published the maps was so that people could check to see if that "weird" guy down the street is a registered gun owner or not supposedly. It still shows very poor judgement in my opinion not just for the reasons already brought up but because it not only shows where the guns are in theory, it also shows where they aren't. This is great information for wanna-be stalkers and burglars...

So the reason they published the maps was so that people could check to see if that "weird" guy down the street is a registered gun owner or not supposedly. It still shows very poor judgement in my opinion not just for the reasons already brought up but because it not only shows where the guns are in theory, it also shows where they aren't. This is great information for wanna-be stalkers and burglars...

Ah, nice catch. I think that's a pretty good explanation as to why someone thought making that map was a good idea. Still, very poor judgement. .

It's hard to speculate about the motives for making the map. But I suspect this is the kind of thing that happens in newsrooms on holiday weekends when all the senior editors and reporters are on vacation. Some second stringer or inexperienced reporter was compiling the information and just happened to finish his project when nobody was around to tell him not to publish it.

I'm not convinced about that last part. It's a LOT of data and a reporter wouldn't know how to create a map like that unless s/he also happened happened to have some fairly serious webdev skills. If not, it would've required the help of their IT department.

I can't figure out why lohud.com created this map. What's the purpose of it? The article doesn't say anything about the reasoning behind it.

It looks like a pure dick move.

It's an attempt at harassing and shaming gun owners. lohud.com had best hope that no one is hurt or killed by someone who then claims he checked their site and knew that person didn't own a gun. Because if that happens, they'll get sued and the NRA will have a field day with their misdeed.

I'm not convinced about that last part. It's a LOT of data and a reporter wouldn't know how to create a map like that unless s/he also happened happened to have some fairly serious webdev skills. If not, it would've required the help of their IT department.

You sure about that? I was led to believe that making a google maps overlay was child's play; little more than entering a list of addresses followed by the info you want displayed on said address. Something you could (almost?) input via MS Excel, I thought...
And embedding a google maps object is something you can find a thousand tutorials for.

I didn't read the article, but i wouldn't assume that shaming was the purpose. It's fascinating data. Who would have guessed that there are huge swaths of neighborhood with no gun owners and some neighborhood where they're extremely densely packed.

I would have thought that distribution was random. And I was wrong. And I still don't know why.

Here's the thing though, without seriously trying, I am not going to be able to kill massive numbers of people when I light up a cigarette. Cars were not specifically designed for killing. And alcohol, while not healthy and outright dangerous in more than a small quantity, is generally not responsible for massive death at the hands of one person.

All of those things are a public safety and health issue. People are smoking less, each generation seems to leave it behind a bit more than the last. Car accidents are generally not planned, out of the 3, alcohol,IMO is probably the most damaging. There's also an addiction factor at work with two of those three, which complicates things somewhat.

I stuck my foot in it by saying what I said above,obviously. Guns are a special problem and we really need to look at what other countries are doing in regards to safety,licensing, and control of firearms and ammunition,then adapt it to fit us. I think if the will is there to do that, death by bullet statistics might drop. WAY too many people don't take guns seriously enough, even in families where guns are part of the family history and traditions.

You sure about that? I was led to believe that making a google maps overlay was child's play; little more than entering a list of addresses followed by the info you want displayed on said address. Something you could (almost?) input via MS Excel, I thought...
And embedding a google maps object is something you can find a thousand tutorials for.

Yep, pretty sure. Google has an experimental app that does what you describe using data stored in Google Drive, and the process remains pretty straightforward as long as you're dealing with a simple dataset and don't need to add any bells & whistles.

That said, most of the clients I work with wouldn't be able to tell me what version of their browser they're running. In fact, before I started working with them, most didn't even know what a browser is or which one they were using, forget about version numbers. Get them to watch tutorials, import data sets, and copy & paste HTML code? Excuse me while I ROFL. And we're talking college educated people in the corporate world here.*

You (and KT) could be right--it's certainly within the realm of the possible that a tech-savvy reporter already knew which Google App s/he'd need and had time to review some online tutorials & crank out the map in an hour or two, but... let's just say that based on my professional experience I wouldn't bet money on that being the case.

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*LOL, I just remembered the video below. It's from 2009, when Chrome was still relatively new and Google was trying to promote it:

Google Takes to TV to Promote Browser

[...] But, as Google amusingly discovered when it toured Times Square with a video camera to ask people what a browser is, many people don’t know the name of their browser or that they can download a different browser than the one preloaded on their PC.

“The browser’s probably the most important piece of software on anyone’s computer, but a lot of people, the people we’re targeting with these TV spots, don’t know what a browser is,” said Robert Wong, creative director of the Google Creative Lab. [...]

Florida has passed all sorts of reactionary (and expensive) "Megan's Law" and ankle-bracelet tracking laws for convicted sex offenders to combat the once-every-three-year abduction and murder (not that those aren't horrible.)

Meanwhile, 100 kids a year drown in backyard swimming pools in FL alone and there's no law requiring pool alarms, etc.